A Comprehensive Electro-Thermal and Fluid-Dynamic Model for Liquid-Cooled Lithium-Ion Cells: Development and Experimental Validation

The temperature evolution of lithium-ion cells under operation has a significant impact on their performance, efficiency, and aging. Modeling the thermal status of lithium-ion cells is crucial to predict and prevent undesired working conditions or even failures. In this context, this paper presents a mathematical model to predict the transient temperature distributions of a lithium-ion polymer battery (LiPo) cooled by forced convection via a specially designed channel plate for liquid cooling. For the battery modeling, Newman’s pseudo-2D approach was used to perform a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis. It assumes that the porous electrode is made of equally sized, isotropic, homogeneous spherical particles, which results in smooth, uniform intercalation/de-intercalation of lithium inside the electrode. Also, the channel plate geometry and the cooling liquid fluid-dynamic behavior were simulated with a commercial code based on the finite volume method. The model has been set up and validated through experimental measurements performed on the LiPo and a 3D-printed sample of the cooling plate. Both electrical and thermal parameters of the battery and the refrigerant circuit were collected during the tests at different ambient and charge/discharge conditions. The simulated results were in good agreement with the experimental data. The electro-thermal and fluid-dynamic predictions of the developed model can be used for “test-before-invest” industrial strategies to support the design of battery cooling systems with high performance.